Something So Small
by ScopesMonkey
Summary: Sherlock learns to do something new.


"Don't tell me you've never done this."

"Of course I've never done this," Sherlock replied reasonably. "When would I have? Why have you?"

"I'm a doctor, Sherlock," John said. "I've held loads of babies. It's part of the job."

He'd even spent some days in Afghanistan working with a Doctors Without Borders team, men and women who astonished John to no end with their dedication to working in areas without the benefit of guaranteed military protection, to ensure people without reliable access to medical care got help. It had been rewarding, to say the least. He'd even helped deliver an infant one of those days, working alongside a Canadian doctor from Quebec and an American nurse from Texas. And, of course, a young mother, who had been remarkably calm and collected. John probably shouldn't have been there, being a strange man and from another country, but the woman had been so happy to have doctors she hadn't seem to care. And had been naturally somewhat distracted by other matters.

"You need to shift your arms like this…" John said, illustrating.

"I can determine the mechanics involved quite easily," Sherlock replied, almost miffed, as if he were mildly insulted that John thought he could not figure it out. "Basic biology makes it obvious – the muscles in the back and neck need to develop some strength and coordination before the head can be supported, which can only come through time and use. And, obviously, more support is better, so yes, I will use both of my arms."

John just grinned, leaning back.

Tricia stood easily with the weight in her arms, although Sherlock noted she was still moving slowly, but recovery could take awhile, even if things went well – which they had – and it had only been two days since she'd given birth. Loss of sleep was common as well with newborns, which also explained the stiffness and slowness of her movements. She crossed her livingroom, gesturing for Sherlock to stay sitting where he was.

"You sure?" she asked, smiling at him.

"If it were difficult, we wouldn't have survived as a species," Sherlock pointed out logically. "I'm more than confident in my ability to manage this."

For some reason, John chuckled. Sherlock ignored him. The man had no sense, he really didn't.

Tricia shifted Josephine carefully into Sherlock's arms, which he adjusted in response to the new weight and its distribution. As he did so, the infant opened her blue eyes and looked up at him vaguely, not really seeing him, unable to focus just yet. That would come within the next few weeks. She moved her lips slightly, the tiny tip of her tongue appearing and then disappearing, as though she were tasting the air and the new scent that surrounded her.

Tricia moved away and Sherlock looked down.

Josephine waved her small hands vaguely toward him.

Amazing.

He'd had no idea that something so small could be so warm, and so dense. Not heavy, because she was just over seven pounds, and Sherlock had a great deal of experience moving dead adult bodies, which routinely weighed upwards of one hundred and fifty pounds. And the term 'dead weight' had been coined with remarkable accuracy.

This was completely different.

John kept him warm at night, his body radiating heat, and Sherlock had often noted that men seemed to generate more internal heat than woman. He had not expected a newborn infant to do the same. He could feel the warmth pressed against his arms and chest, as though she were a tiny furnace, all downy hair and soft skin and that odd combination of milk-and-powder smells that new babies always had, before they developed a distinct scent of their own.

Astonishing, too, how his arms shifted instinctively to bear the weight properly, as though his body didn't need input from his brain to determine how to balance. This had never happened before, except for with John, and that was different. Now, he was doing this to best hold someone securely, but also lightly, not too hard, not too gently.

He kept his eyes trained on her face. For someone with less than forty-eight hours of experience, she had remarkably mobile features, her eyes shifting, her muscles twitching as she tried them out, her tiny mouth working vaguely, as if she were hungry and wanting to eat, or just adjusting to it, experimenting with what she could do.

But impossible to tell what she was thinking.

Sherlock had never, ever encountered that before. Even John, who still managed to surprise him. Even Moriarty, who had been so good at hiding his intentions. No adult he'd ever faced had been able to completely remove their emotions from their expression, even if they could greatly reduce the amount of information being displayed. At some point in a conversation, something would slip through, a glint in the eyes that was gone in less than a second, the momentary pitch of a voice, the twitch of the lips, the involuntary movement of a muscle.

But how did one tell what an infant was thinking, when there were no words with which to think, and no experience that could be directly translated? Impossible. What did the world look like to someone so young? Hazy and unfocused? What did she see? Was Sherlock himself only a blur distinguished between the dark hair and the pale skin? Or was there more resolution, but not enough to lock onto individual features?

And what would she see and think, as she grew? Sherlock had never considered the process of thought acquisition before, because he dealt solely with men and women who had already developed the ability, sometimes turning it against others for their own ends, a game, a vendetta, an unstoppable moment of anger. But what happened before that? When did thoughts turn into words? How long did it take as one learned to speak? What was it before that? Emotions? Impressions? Images? Colours? Smells? All of those things combined into a language that anyone who had already learned to talk could not grasp? Because how could it be communicated, when there was no common language?

He would have to make notes. This could be a fascinating experiment. Experience.

Carefully, he shifted the infant – Josephine, such a distinguished name for such a tiny person – and touched her face with one fingertip. She reacted to that immediately, turning toward his touch, mouth working a bit more, as if to suck on his finger. That reflex was strong, which was why parents gave their children dummies and children put whatever they could into their mouths. Before they learned to distinguish touch solely with their hands. Sherlock wondered if losing this ability resulted in the loss of information.

He thought about John.

Probably, he decided, because if he had not ever touched John with his mouth, he wouldn't know him half so well. But there were social implications there, and Sherlock could see why. He was not about to go about snogging strangers. He didn't need that many people in his personal space.

Plus, John would probably be jealous.

The handshake had replaced kissing on the cheek in England during the outbreak of some plague. Sherlock recalled reading that somewhere. Were the French less worried about plagues? Something to look into.

But not right now.

He touched the corner of Josephine's mouth very gently and her lips twitched. In a smile? Or just in response to the instinct to suckle? He tried again.

It was most definitely a newborn infant smile, he decided. John had told him once that doctors had long thought babies needed to learn to smile from seeing adults do it, until advances in ultrasound imaging let them see unborn babies smiling in the womb.

Fascinating.

If she could smile, then she could feel pleasure, then something had to be the source of that pleasure.

What was it for an infant?

It could be so many things for an adult. Sherlock would have read it in her expression if she'd been a grown woman, but how to judge now? Simply being held? Was that enough for an infant? Could it even be more? At two days old, what kind of desires could a person have?

Did the amount of physical contact a person experienced during infancy influence their preferences as an adult? Most likely. Primates were social animals; contact was essential. He moved his hand from her face carefully, touching one of her small hands. Immediately, she wrapped her fist around his finger, holding on so much more tightly than he had anticipated.

Another instinct, yes. To grasp. To be able to cling to a mother when infants were carried not in the arms, but on the body, holding onto body hair. Humans had long lost that, and children were born too immature to hold themselves onto their mothers, but the instinct remained, even after all this time. Her grip was impressive, actually, and she didn't seem to want to let go. Sherlock jiggled her hand gently but she kept her fist closed, her small arm moving gently in time with his movements.

He found he didn't mind and let her hold onto his finger.

When would this fade? At what age did a child no longer automatically close her fist around physical contact? When she started to crawl? Walk? When mobility became her own purview, not that of another? Or when coordination became enough that she could use her arms to hold onto someone else, not just her tiny hands?

Something else he'd have to study.

And would she always be this warm? When was that lost? When she grew out of needing to be held all the time and wanted to be free, to move on her own, or at least play outside of the arms of an adult? When she learned to walk, and then run, and then burnt out her energy doing so? Or when she grew up altogether, turned into a woman, and whatever internal heating switch she had shut off, so that she did not feel like a small human furnace?

When would she develop her own smell?

When would she develop her own personality? Did she have one already? Were the seeds already there? This was so absorbing; he would really have to pay close attention to that. When did children begin to differentiate themselves as individuals? When, for instance, had he become a sociopath? Had he been born like that, or had it developed shortly thereafter? When had Moriarty become a psychopath? No, psychopaths were indeed born that way. But when had John become the man he was? How different had he been as a boy?

He must remember to get some baby pictures of John, and put them on the fridge.

Sherlock was willing to bet John had been an unbearably cute baby.

He was somewhat surprised at himself for thinking this.

What would Josephine look like when she was grown? Were there indications there already? She had blond hair and blue eyes, like Tricia, but Tricia's blond hue was darker. Most Caucasian babies were born with blue eyes, so would she lose them, would they turn brown like her father's? If he studied her enough now, could he pick up on these hints of what was to come?

Sherlock suddenly became aware of the sound of grinning.

And it _was_ a sound, no matter what John said. Not of the expression itself, but the shifting of bodies, the movement that went into suppressing chuckles, the quietness that came from keeping laughter inside.

Sherlock looked up.

Tricia was smirking at him, her blue eyes dancing, sitting cross-legged and leaning forward so that her forearms rested on her knees, eyes trained both on Sherlock and her infant daughter. Henry Walsh was perched beside her on the arm of the couch, his brown eyes alight, a smile curling at his lips. And John was grinning, his brown eyes dancing, faint crinkles around those eyes, his face beaming.

And he was holding up his phone.

He'd taken a picture. No, several.

Sherlock's brain rushed back to the present.

"You are not allowed to post those on your blog," he said severely, the tone of his voice not matching the care with which he held his niece.

John's grin widened, his eyes twinkling mischievously. He took another picture, then shrugged one shoulder, his good right shoulder, as if committing to nothing.

"I have a professional reputation to maintain," Sherlock reminded him.

Tricia chuckled and Henry shook his head, looking far too amused for Sherlock's liking.

"We'll see," John conceded in a tone of voice that told Sherlock he was really not capitulating to anything.

_Blast_, Sherlock thought. Now he'd have to think of new and inventive ways to bribe John. Not that he particularly minded that; he especially enjoyed figuring novel means of making John moan or gasp or tremble. Each time he did, it was a rather personal victory. Especially when the doctor abandoned any sense of decorum and forgot they had a downstairs neighbour – who was starting to go deaf anyhow.

Sherlock was relieved but didn't show it when John put the phone away. He supposed it was fair that Tricia and Henry have these images, to document their daughter's life.

Perhaps he could even get John to print one, so they could put it on their fridge. That wouldn't damage his reputation, either, unless Lestrade came around for another set up drugs bust. Sherlock was certain he could avoid that eventuality.

He looked back down at the tiny person in his arms and evaluated the sensation. Not the physical sensation, which was still startling, but the emotional one, which was utterly unexpected and for which he'd been unprepared. Being an uncle had seemed abstract until this moment, because he wasn't actually related to Josephine and had acquired Tricia as a friend because she knew John. To be fair, though, they were also friends in their own right, but he wouldn't have known her if not for his husband. Mycroft had no children – at least, none that Sherlock knew about, but with Mycroft, one could never been certain – and nor did Harry. Sherlock knew John hoped Harry kept it that way.

It had been strange to realize, back when he met John and they'd become friends, that he was capable of feeling those emotions that most people felt for others. Stranger still to fall in love with John, bit by bit, so that when it came out, he could not define a day, a point, when it had begun. As though he'd been feeling it for so long he could not imagine what it was like not to feel it.

He could actually not imagine that, no.

This was different.

This was a tiny baby, more potential than personality, unable to communicate in the ways in which Sherlock was used to, unable to even actually see him fully yet, unable to move on her own, to exist independently of others.

But he had fallen in love. At first sight.


End file.
